Saint: From Starbucks to the Front Line
By Matthew Parish
Tuesday 6 October 2026
An American soldier on combat, loss, mental health, stray cats, coffee and why he continues to fight for Ukraine
There is something improbable about Saint’s journey to Ukraine. He is 25 years old, an American and a former US Army reservist. He spent five years as a combat engineer but never deployed in that capacity. After leaving the Army, he became a Starbucks barista. Then he travelled to Ukraine and became an infantryman in a European war.
For approximately a year and a half, Saint served with a legion under Ukraine’s military intelligence structures. He deployed twice to the Zaporizhzhia region and experienced heavy fighting around Stepnohirsk. He lost a close friend there. What followed was not the heroic progression sometimes imagined in stories about foreign volunteers: grief, isolation, drinking and a prolonged struggle with his mental health.
Saint eventually found his way back with the assistance of Ukrainian friends. That experience transformed his understanding of why he was in Ukraine. He says that he no longer thinks principally in terms of fighting for the Ukrainian state. He fights for Ukrainian people.
He has now left his former legion. For security reasons, he cannot discuss the work he currently undertakes, and we have deliberately omitted details that might compromise his identity or present activities. We call him only Saint.
I interviewed him while we were travelling together by train across Ukraine. The internet connection was imperfect, but his message was not.
Matthew Parish: You have asked us to call you Saint. Without revealing anything that could identify you or compromise your security, what can you tell us about yourself?
Saint: I’m 25 years old. I’m a five-year veteran of the US Army Reserve, where I was a combat engineer. After I got out of the Army, I was a Starbucks barista. Now I’m an infantryman in Ukraine.
MP: What did your experience as a combat engineer teach you, and how well did it prepare you for what you later encountered in Ukraine?
Saint: It taught me how to be a soldier. It taught me how to compartmentalise certain things, how to learn the tasks I have to do and how to operate effectively as part of a team.
That’s really what it comes down to. I learned how to be a soldier.
MP: There is an extraordinary contrast in your story: US Army reservist, Starbucks barista and then an infantryman fighting in Ukraine. How did you get from making coffee in America to fighting a major European war?
Saint: When I left the Army and became a barista, I was married. I had wanted to come to Ukraine much sooner, but my marriage tied me to the United States.
Then I got divorced and went through a lot of things in my personal life. I was out of the Army, making coffee, and I missed the Army. I missed being a soldier. I had never had the chance to deploy and actually do my job.
I had also been following the war in Ukraine since 2014. I’ve always been interested in history: the First World War, the Second World War, Vietnam and American history generally. Americans have gone to fight in foreign wars before larger wars developed. That was a big reason why I came here.
MP: What made you decide that supporting Ukraine was important enough to leave your previous life behind and come here personally?
Saint: If I’m being honest, at the beginning I wanted to actually do my job as a soldier. But then I spent time in Ukraine. I got to know the people and fought for them, and I fell in love with this country.
After my second deployment to Zaporizhzhia, I was in a really dark place. Since then, Ukraine has become much more personal to me.
MP: When you first arrived, what expectations did you have about Ukraine and the war, and which of those expectations proved wrong?
Saint: I was joining a legion under military intelligence, so I expected a lot of structure. I expected good equipment and a high degree of professionalism.
What I discovered was that this is a war. You have the people you have, the equipment you have and the tasks you have.
My previous unit was classified as special operations — I say that with quotation marks around it — but at the end of the day we were infantrymen. That was the work I did.
MP: You served for approximately a year and a half. What was everyday life in the Legion actually like?
Saint: When we weren’t deployed, we tried not to go outside too much because we wanted to keep a low profile. Everyone on my previous team was an English speaker, so we tried not to speak English in front of local people because we didn’t want to reveal who we were or where we lived.
We would leave to get food, work out or train. Otherwise, if we were leaving, it was generally because we were going on a mission.
MP: You deployed twice to the Zaporizhzhia region and experienced heavy fighting around Stepnohirsk during your second deployment. What can you safely tell us about what that experience felt like from the perspective of an infantryman?
Saint: That was my first real taste of war and my first real taste of loss.
Without going into specifics, I lost a close friend. It affected my ability to operate effectively.
One thing people don’t understand enough about war and heavy fighting is the importance of mental health. When somebody you idolise and look up to — somebody senior to you — dies in front of you, and you have to carry him, it takes a lot out of you.
You don’t recover from something like that immediately. But at the time you have to compartmentalise it because otherwise you can lose your own life and endanger the people around you. People are still shooting at you. You still have to function.
Saint: I believe in the reasons for being here. I came here for idealistic reasons. But idealism becomes very different when everything is right in front of you, people are shooting at you and you have to shoot back.
They are actively trying to kill you. Then they kill your friends. It makes you angry.
MP: Was there a particular moment when Ukraine ceased to be simply a country you had come to defend and became somewhere to which you felt personally attached?
Saint: When my friend died, I went into a really dark place. I didn’t leave my apartment for months. I was drinking every day. I would basically leave only to go to bars.
Eventually I had lost all my money. People stopped checking whether I was taking care of myself. Then I reached out to a Ukrainian friend. That friend connected me with other friends, and those people took care of me.
My phone had been broken for a long time and I couldn’t afford to fix it. I couldn’t get another contract to go back and fight. They helped me.
That was when I realised what I was fighting for. It wasn’t the Ukrainian government. It was the Ukrainian people. At the end of the day, we’re soldiers.
MP: What did you learn from Ukrainian soldiers that you would never have learned from military training in the United States?
Saint: Drones. Drone awareness. How to identify drones by sound.
I also learned not to be bound completely by doctrine and to be much more reactive as a soldier. This war isn’t linear. It constantly evolves. There is always a new threat.
Sometimes you have to leave the doctrine aside and work by instinct.
MP: You have said that you care very deeply about Ukrainian people. What is it about Ukrainians and Ukrainian society that has produced that attachment?
Saint: Ukrainian people care about people. They’re communal. They appreciate foreigners who come here and fight for idealistic reasons.
They’re also quite libertarian, and as an American I’m pretty libertarian myself, particularly because of where I come from. So I see many of the same beliefs that I have.
I’m also an Orthodox Christian. I believe in God, and I recognise many of the same values here.
But one of the most important things is that people will help you even when they know you have nothing to give them in return. They’ll still help you. Simple as that.
MP: You are an advocate for mental health. How has combat changed your understanding of trauma, resilience and the psychological consequences of war?
Saint: After my friend died, I was going through a lot. Some people I had served with blamed me for what had happened.
Over time, I learned that I had to forgive myself and sometimes put myself first. That’s an important part of mental health.
Trauma happened. There’s nothing you can do to change the fact that it happened. The only thing you can do is try to become better every day.
A lot of people become stagnant and depressed. They try to drink their problems away, or they go straight back to the front line because they think they’re okay. Then they discover that they can’t work or function properly. They aren’t reliable.
The only way to be a reliable soldier is to be mentally healthy. Mental health is just as important as physical health.
MP: Do soldiers sometimes find it easier to talk about physical wounds than fear, grief, exhaustion, nightmares or psychological injuries?
Saint: Yes. I can’t speak confidently about the Ukrainian culture around this because my Ukrainian and Russian aren’t good enough.
But among Western volunteers I’ve met, a lot of people don’t like showing their emotions. They put on a mask of being the big, masculine foreign soldier.
At the end of the day, though, war affects you whether you like it or not. It’s important to let that mask down and learn how to be a human again.
MP: What could military organisations, veterans’ organisations and society generally do better for people carrying the psychological consequences of combat?
Saint: Empathy.
People need to understand what is good and bad for somebody’s mental health. I don’t think you can just throw pills at people and say everything is okay.
People need to speak about their problems. It takes time, effort and routine. You have to remain aware of your mental health and keep working at it rather than simply taking a pill every day and calling it good.
MP: You have mentioned something strikingly gentle about yourself: you feed stray cats. What role do small acts such as feeding an animal, making coffee or sitting quietly in a café play in maintaining ordinary humanity during wartime?
Saint: My friend who died fed cats every single day. Every day.
I used to think it was a little strange. After he died, I realised what he was doing. He was trying to be human.
That’s what I’m talking about. You have to learn how to be human again after being out in the shit for so long.
You need to sit in a café instead of a bar sometimes. You need to talk to ordinary people who are experiencing this war every day. You need to talk about what they’re interested in because, at the end of the day, war isn’t everything.
This war will end. You need to be able to move on from it. You need hobbies. You need to find your own calling.
We might all be soldiers, but that isn’t all that we are. We can make music. We can draw. We can sing. We can talk to people. We can have coffee.
I like making tea for people. I love cooking. I like creating things. But I also love being a soldier.
There are two sides of the same coin: destruction and creation. I think a lot of soldiers become too focused on the destruction.
MP: After experiencing heavy fighting, does sitting in a café making or drinking coffee feel different from the way it did when you worked at Starbucks?
Saint: A thousand per cent different. When I was working at Starbucks, I wasn’t getting shot at.
Back then it was a job. It was something I did to put food on the table. I’m a soldier now because I choose to be. I like being a soldier professionally, while I like making coffee and cooking as hobbies.
MP: You have left the Legion and made clear that you cannot discuss your present activities, so we will not ask about them. But can you explain why you have chosen to remain committed to Ukraine rather than simply returning to civilian life in the United States?
Saint: Because people looked after me when I was going through serious mental health problems, and I want to give something back.
After the heavy fighting, and after encountering some problems with corruption, I became disillusioned. For a while I forgot why I had come here in the first place.
Then I remembered. It wasn’t for the Ukrainian government. It was for the people.
These people deserve to live their lives.
I’m a Christian. I don’t believe you should serve a government for the sake of serving a government. You serve the people who cannot fight: the old women, the men who cannot walk, people who have lost their legs and little children who deserve a future.
There are young men approaching conscription age whose concerns should be going to school, getting an education and having hobbies.
I never really had that. I joined the Army when I was 17. It matters to me that these people have the opportunity to live a normal life because I never did. I want them to have it.
MP: How has the war changed you as an American, and has living and fighting alongside Ukrainians altered the way you think about the United States?
Saint: I think Americans can be pretty ignorant about a lot of things. We haven’t experienced a full-scale war on anything like this level for generations, and people don’t realise that we aren’t necessarily as far away from these things as they imagine.
A lot of Americans say, “We shouldn’t be supporting Ukraine. We should focus on our own borders.”
But the United States fought an entire Cold War with Russia. These geopolitical problems haven’t simply disappeared. I think it is important that Americans take this war seriously.
The average American may never have travelled abroad. I think more Americans should get passports and see the world. They should see that there is more to the world than America.
MP: When this war eventually ends, what do you hope Ukraine will look like?
Saint: I hope it ends in Ukraine’s favour.
I’m on the side of freedom. At the end of the day, I fight for freedom. I think you should be able to wake up and live your own life without the government constantly telling you what to do.
I believe in democracy, and I want that to continue in Ukraine. I want people to be able to make whatever kind of music they want. I want people to be able to criticise their own government without being beaten for it.
That’s all I want.
MP: Finally, if you could sit down over a cup of coffee with an American who cannot understand why somebody from the United States would risk his life for Ukraine, what would you tell them?
Saint: I’d tell them to read the Bible. And I’d tell them to get a passport.
Come to Ukraine. Go to Kharkiv. Talk to people about what occupation means. Realise what kind of life you take for granted in America.
America isn’t perfect. Things are expensive. But you don’t have to worry every day about your home being bombed. You don’t normally have to think about being pulled away from your family because there’s a war going on.
I’d tell them to read history.
There’s a quote I really like: “Ideals are peaceful, history is violent.” History repeats itself. What we are seeing now is something humanity has seen countless times before. It starts small and turns into something big.
If it doesn’t stop here, who is to say it won’t become something bigger?
Saint’s story contains no tidy conclusion. Perhaps stories from wars seldom do. He came to Ukraine partly because he missed being a soldier and wanted to practise the profession for which he had trained. He stayed for reasons that became considerably more complicated: the death of a friend, the psychological collapse that followed and the Ukrainians who helped him when he had little left to offer them.
Yet perhaps the most revealing part of our conversation was not about infantry tactics, military intelligence or geopolitics. It was about cats.
A soldier whom Saint admired went into a war zone and fed stray cats every day. Saint initially thought this peculiar. Only after that soldier was killed did he understand it differently. Feeding the cats was a way of insisting that beneath the weapons, uniforms, violence and habits necessary for survival, there remained a human being capable of caring for another living creature.
Saint now feeds cats himself.
His observation about destruction and creation may be the most important thing he told me. War trains people to destroy because sometimes destruction is necessary for survival. Yet human beings cannot live indefinitely in that state. They must cook, draw, sing, make tea, sit in cafés, talk nonsense with friends and feed hungry animals. Eventually they must rediscover all the apparently insignificant things for which wars are supposedly being fought in the first place.
For Saint, Ukraine has ceased to be an abstraction on a map or an episode in the military history books he read as a young American. It has become the Ukrainian friends who helped him when he was drinking alone after the death of his comrade; the civilians who want ordinary futures; the cafés in which a soldier can briefly become a civilian again; and the stray cats that still need feeding while missiles and drones pass overhead.
Perhaps this is also why the former Starbucks barista continues to fight. He came to Ukraine looking for a war. Somewhere along the way, amidst loss and disillusionment, he discovered something rather different: people whose ordinary lives he decided were worth defending.
